You’ll find $2.97 at the Costco in Clifton and at the Delta on Broadway in Passaic.

Oil analyst Tom Kloza said prices that low were last seen at the end of June, which he noted is counter-intuitive.

“But the market rushed all the way up to the threshold of $4 last spring and then fell apart,” Kloza told WCBS 880’s Wayne Cabot. “The highest prices in the country are now New York and Connecticut, but we’ll see lower prices probably through the first month or so of the new year.”

He said crude oil was trading for less than $50 a barrel on Wednesday in Canada.

He said it is a trend.

“North America is really the privileged continent for the foreseeable future,” he said. “Our prices for natural gas at wholesale are about one-fourth of what they are on other continents and the shale oil boom and the tar sands boom out in western Canada are pushing a lot of crude out that’s displacing some of that foreign, Mid-Eastern crude in some cases.”

He said that, on balance, we’ll see better prices next year, but the days of $1.39 a gallon gas are gone.

“So, it still makes sense to buy a sensible vehicle as opposed to one of these big Popemobiles or huge Hummers,” he said.

Why are New Jersey prices so low?

“There’s a lot of folks that sell gasoline almost at cost because they want to get you inside to buy the hoagies and the soft drinks and some of the other things that are very high margin,” he said.

Remember, New Jersey also has full service-only gas on top of the low prices.